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Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat (commonly abbreviated MK) is a popular series of fighting games created by Midway, which in turn spawned a number of related media. It is especially noted for its digitized sprites (which differentiated it from its contemporaries' hand-drawn sprites), and its mix of bloody and brutal action; its graphic Fatality killing moves contributed to the founding of the ESRB. Overview The original Mortal Kombat was developed as a reaction to the popular Capcom fighting game Street Fighter II, with simpler controls and digitized graphics. The original idea of Mortal Kombat was thought up in 1989 along with storyline and game content, but not put to arcades until 1992 (and game systems). Some say the game's graphic violence was gratuitous, and was only included in order to generate a public outcry and controversy that would garner publicity for the game. Although highly controversial, the mix of realism and violence propelled Mortal Kombat to widespread and historic renown. Throughout the series, the game was noted for its simplicity of controls and the exotic special moves it featured, as well as a tendency to replace the letter 'c' in a word with the letter 'k', thus deliberately misspelling the word "combat" in the title, as well as any other words that begin with the letter 'c'. Legacy Midway created five sequels for the arcade and home systems, each one bloodier, gorier, more brutal, and stranger than the last. Mortal Kombat 4 brought the series into 3D, replacing the digitized fighters of the previous games with polygon models, while Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was the first in the series to skip arcades altogether and go directly to consoles, a symptom of U.S. arcade market's dramatic decline. The sixth installment in the series, Mortal Kombat: Deception, was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 platforms in October 2004 (with a Nintendo GameCube version released in February 2005). Following a gameplay style very similar to the one found on Deadly Alliance, Deception also features several new gaming modes, such as a Puzzle Fighter-like puzzle game, an Archon-like chess game, and an RPG-style quest mode, as well as a suicidal finishing move for each character, usually performed to prevent the opponent from doing a Fatality. A Sony PSP version of Deception (named Mortal Kombat: Unchained) was released, and a final sixth-generation console title, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, continued the current story continuity and featured almost all the characters that had appeared in the series. Then, Mortal Kombat moved to the next-gen consoles, Xbox 360 and PS3, with the non-canon, crossover game, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, which featured several characters from both the MK''and DC universe. It also introduced new gameplay features such as Freefall Kombat, Klose Kombat, and a combat-related Test Your Might minigame. Then, on April 19th, 2011, the newly created NetherRealm Studios released the ninth main game in the series, simply titled ''Mortal Kombat. It retells the stories of MK, MKII, and MK3 with a few unexpected twists and changes. The game's purpose was to bring the series back to its roots, placing the action back on a 2D plane once more, rather than on the 3D planes that were introduced in MK4 and used since then. On April 2015, the MK franchise continued with Mortal Kombat X on the eighth-generation consoles, for the first time, adding three different gameplay variations for each character. Finishing moves in later games included the Animality (turning into an animal to violently finish off the opponent), the Brutality (beating an opponent into pieces with a long combination of hits or combo), the Friendship (offering one's opponent a token of friendship), and the Babality (transforming the opponent into a baby). The Babality and Friendship moves were created as a jokey non-violent finishing move, a swipe at the US Congressional Investigation for Violence in Videogames who came down harshly on the Mortal Kombat games. Purists, fonder of the earlier style, were upset by the introduction of such finishing moves, yet Mortal Kombat's "purely violent" and dark gameplay was once again implemented after the release of Mortal Kombat 4. More so than other fighting games at the time, Mortal Kombat was notorious for recoloring certain sprites to appear as different characters. This was most prominent with the series' various ninja/assassin characters. Although many of the more popular characters were spawned from these pallette swaps, the sheer over-saturation of the roster with them (to date, eight male ninjas, four female assassins, and three cyber ninjas, making a total of 15 repaints; almost one-fourth of the series' total roster), as well as the fighting game genre's gradual demand for unique looks for all their characters, lead to many fans growing sick of the recolors, and joking about their overuse in the series. Hence, 'ninja syndrome' is a typical complaint among fans to describe any fighting game that has similar-looking or palette swapped characters. Characters * Alien * Ashrah * Baraka * Blaze * Bo' Rai Cho * Cassie Cage * Cetrion * Chameleon * Cyber Sub-Zero * Cyrax * D'Vorah * Daegon * Dairou * Darrius * Drahmin * Ermac * Erron Black * Ferra & Torr * Freddy Krueger * Frost * Fujin * Geras * Goro * Grandmaster * Havik * Hotaru * Hsu Hao * Jacqui Briggs * Jade * Jarek * Jason Voorhees * Jax Briggs * Johnny Cage * Kabal * Kai * Kano * Kenshi * Khameleon * Kintaro * Kira * Kitana * Kobra * Kollector * Kotal Kahn * Kratos * Kronika * Kung Jin * Kung Lao * Kurtis Stryker * Leatherface * Li Mei * Liu Kang * Mavado * Meat * Mileena * Mokap * Molach * Motaro * Nightwolf * Nitara * Noob Saibot * Onaga * Predator * Quan Chi * Raiden * Rain * Reiko * Reptile * Sareena * Scorpion * Sektor * Shang Tsung * Shao Kahn * Sheeva * Shinnok * Shujinko * Sindel * Skarlet * Smoke * Sonya Blade * Sub-Zero * Takeda Takahashi * Tanya * Taven * Tremor * Triborg Audio TOASTY! Dan Forden Category:Mortal Kombat Category:Video series